Coronavirus: COVID-19

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exogenesis
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by exogenesis » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 02:33

Really ? you think this is propaganda of some sort ?

Seems a whole lot of effort to go to,
have to wonder what's the gain for them in doing that, 'faking' scientific data.

Where's the line between fake & 'not-proper' ?

BaronVerde
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 03:16

Generally, if it doesn't cite correctly that's frequently a sign that something is fishy. For instance, the article mentions work of others in a general way ("studies have shown ...") but doesn't actually cite those, who, when, where published. Also, the article titled "Vaccinating is pointless for the ones who had covid" is most certainly pseudoscience, that was the main hint that made me warn.

I personally am unable to properly judge a medical publication (my strength lies in geoscience, actually). I usuaklly rely on the journal and their reputation. Artcicles in one of the well reputed sources like Sciencemag, Nature, Elsevier, Medical journals like The Lancet, official (inter-)national health offices and organisations, then chances are it's not nonsense. Marginal outlets are often too much information, they may cover fringe cases, or nbring in new ideas that may add to a discussion among experts, but aren't necessarily good for public consumption, yet :-)

There's much noise around covid. And fake news is an industry ...

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exogenesis
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by exogenesis » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 12:40

tbh I think you're being somewhat over-zealous in throwing doubt on the information in
*the review article I actually linked*
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210 ... CoV-2.aspx

Guess it's better to be more cautious than gullible, but attempting to damn the article
'cos you disliked the 'tone', & you found a linked paper that you didn't like the title of,
seems a bit OTT.

The actual title was
'Vaccination after prior infection elicits broadly neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2'

The article honestly states:
*Important notice
medrxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore,
should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior,
or treated as established information.
I really wish we wouldn't use the expression 'fake news' for this kind of data,
there's too much association with the shenanigans of Mr-Orange :roll:
Unfortunately it's become a meme that's self-sustaining / self-reinforcing.
It implies some sort of deliberate mis-leading is going on, which I don't think is the case here.

The main point was that there are indications that a pre-infection gives a significantly better
protection against covid variants, than just vaccinations alone - which is just observed information.

However I can't image anyone recommending deliberately infecting people in advance :o
(except, early on in the pandemic it seemed maybe the UK gov. was exploring the idea of relying on 'herd immunity')

BaronVerde
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 14:41

Pre print servers are not for public consumption. The papers in there are not reviewed (maybe not yet, one must check individually if they were actually submitted at a well reputed journal for review) and don't necessarily reflect a majority view of the scientific community. "medical-news.net", apparently coming out of now-where recently, seems to me as being such a case of fake news alongside with possible serious work, which makes it even more difficult to judge for the likes of us :-)

My suggestion would be for COVID related info, that may impact individual health as well as that of the ones we live with, to stick with official sources and published, peer reviewed work and leave marginal work and pre-prints aside, just to not accidentally expose us to a bias or work that carries an agenda in it.

I am not criticising anyone personally, I am in no position to do so, just trying to generally avoid being misinformed. Would be my suggestion :-)

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mr.WHO
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Mon, 12. Jul 21, 16:15

Interesting news in my Country - aparently 30-40% of deaths were people with diabetes (and in vast majority of cases it was type 2 and only rarely type 1).

It seems that Type 2 diabetes deaths were most of old people, but it seems the primary cause of severe COVID reaction was the diabetes weakening the inmune system rather than old age.

exogenesis
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by exogenesis » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 09:47

Makes me wonder what the diabetes incidence is, c.f. covid incidence.

However I can't image anyone recommending deliberately infecting people in advance :o
(except, early on in the pandemic it seemed maybe the UK gov. was exploring the idea of relying on 'herd immunity')
Looks like UK gov. is going to gamble that this current situation
is going to get better 'by itself', by lifting (most) restrictions next week :gruebel:

[ external image ]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57751056

Current arguments are :
'because its summer, & if we waited for autumn/winter it could be worse'
'vaccinations appear to have reduced deaths 10 fold'

I've read that up to 1 in 150 UK people are currently infected with virus variant D.

How about waiting till the current wave is over, then look at the options ?

This is a risky move I don't want to watch from anywhere except from inside a bunker

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 10:05

Yeah, the exploding numbers are why science has warned and sttill warns against opening. The situation was avoidable had politicians listened. Fall is going to be interesting, but somehow I have the feeling that people are getting dulled an indifferent over catching COVID.

And vaccinations do have drastically reduced the covid related deaths. Those unvaccinated will have a russian roulette before them, or sit in a more or less crowded bunker :-). But I need serious work to cite before I can give any figures. Such work might not be avilable at the moment because it needs time to produce in a reliable and reproducible manner.

My claim is: To the deciders, money is more important than people's health and lives.

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mr.WHO
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 10:19

There is no point in locking down if the number of hospitalizations is within safe margin - the new cases in UK are big, but amount of hospitalization and death is much lower than before.

With current numbers, you would need never seen before numbers of new cases to overwhelm the medical system with hospitalizations and deaths.
Vacines are working and UK is one of most vacinated places on the planet.

No need to spread fear panic, easpecially that there is no proof that delta is any mroe deadly than normal varian, just more infectious, but this seems to be more than negated by vacinations.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 10:44

The point is, it is important to stop the spread to keep the virus from evolving further, possibly out of vaccine control.

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mr.WHO
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 10:51

BaronVerde wrote:
Tue, 13. Jul 21, 10:44
The point is, it is important to stop the spread to keep the virus from evolving further, possibly out of vaccine control.
You're delusional, if you think you can stop virus from evolving - even if you could magically vaccinate 7 bilion people in less than 3 months, then average vaccine efficiency is like 85% (and I don't even start about 3rd world vacinate with Russina and Chinese vacines that are like 50% efficient).

This means virus will keep spreading and evolving, no matter if UK or entire West will lock or not - already out of 4 main variants, only one is from UK/West.

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Chips
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Chips » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 12:10

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 13. Jul 21, 10:51
BaronVerde wrote:
Tue, 13. Jul 21, 10:44
The point is, it is important to stop the spread to keep the virus from evolving further, possibly out of vaccine control.
You're delusional, if you think you can stop virus from evolving - even if you could magically vaccinate 7 bilion people in less than 3 months, then average vaccine efficiency is like 85% (and I don't even start about 3rd world vacinate with Russina and Chinese vacines that are like 50% efficient).

This means virus will keep spreading and evolving, no matter if UK or entire West will lock or not - already out of 4 main variants, only one is from UK/West (and it doesn't help that UK is global travel hub).
Erm, with regards to your post prior to this quoted one - the figures of the UK have for infections have a lag for hospitalisations - 2 weeks? Deaths lag even more.
Secondly, while deaths are now majority of vaccinated old (and are definitely a lot lower than if there were no vaccinations), the numbers of young being hospitalised are rising - they aren't immune to it. Obviously with zero restrictions it's going to go a heck of a lot faster and people argue that having more vaccinations prior to this would reduce this number quite a bit.

Off the back of that, long covid is a thing, and if vaccination reduces the chances of suffering from it, then that's a strong argument as well - delay would reduce the numbers who may have their future lives permanently impacted by long covid.

On the flip side, delaying longer pushes things into Autumn when flu and others may rise their head as usual and/or covid would likely transmit much quicker/easier due to confines and spaces. Last year due to lockdowns the flu wasn't too bad, but every year it kills a few hundred per day during peak winter times (allegedly), so delaying longer risks pushing covid into that area and overwhelming hospitals dramatically as both viruses are acting at the same time.
We're going to need "top up" jabs as well, immunisation doesn't give lifetime immunity, so trying to get the majority of the young *intentionally* infected may help reduce transmission rates in autumn, while govt can focus on jabs for the older again.

The sad thing is there's a lot of capacity for vaccinations going unused. I rescheduled mine, and had no problems whatsoever picking a date a mere week away. Nearly every day had majority of vacant slots to chose from. So many more members of society *could* get immunised, but the yooof don't seem interested or believe in it. Who knows. Maybe give them a free pint if they get jabbed or a 50% reduction on entry price to a match or club.

As for mutations and evolving - if there's a 0.0001% chance of a mutation, then the difference between 10,000 daily infections and 1,000,000 daily infections would be significant - and of those some of the mutations may prove to be far more virulent and deadly. If the R number drops below the ability to maintain spreading the virus due to vaccinations and restrictions, then the chances of more mutations (and having a really bad mutation) drop, and any new ones may die out prior to actually spreading. Covid may never die out entirely, but the hope is to ensure due to vaccinations and more than the R rate drops below 1. Going "let it rip everywhere" may just result in more really bad mutations.

There are arguments for both ways (don't throw off restrictions vs going free) as they outline. Personally I think it's mental that they're going as far as they're going - 70,000 crammed into a stadium, talk of night clubs and so on. Are they really necessary and important in the scheme of things? Not really, and delaying with a public statement that lack of vaccination uptake being the reason may help tease people out (I think that's what they're doing with talk of people who are vaccinated not having to isolate on return from holidays, which in turn has led to some threatening doctors and medical staff as they want a second jab way before time allows purely so they can go on holiday). Politicians don't have their eye on the wellbeing of the public alone. They've other considerations, including their own electability.

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mr.WHO
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 12:43

Chips wrote:
Tue, 13. Jul 21, 12:10
Erm, with regards to your post prior to this quoted one - the figures of the UK have for infections have a lag for hospitalisations - 2 weeks? Deaths lag even more.
Secondly, while deaths are now majority of vaccinated old (and are definitely a lot lower than if there were no vaccinations), the numbers of young being hospitalised are rising - they aren't immune to it. Obviously with zero restrictions it's going to go a heck of a lot faster and people argue that having more vaccinations prior to this would reduce this number quite a bit.

Off the back of that, long covid is a thing, and if vaccination reduces the chances of suffering from it, then that's a strong argument as well - delay would reduce the numbers who may have their future lives permanently impacted by long covid.
Well, we'll see in two weeks - in my country we have been open for over a month and despite significantly lower vacination rates than UK, the cases/hospitalization/deaths are low and stable for over 2 weeks.


Long COVID is media fear porn.
The Long SARS was well studies and it wasn't out of ordinaty to have symptoms up to 3-6 months (including temporary changes in lungs). Only Most sever cases were above 12 months and having pernament dammage is like winning a lotery (I think there was only a dozen or two dozen cases out of all SARS cases).

You can also have Long Flu, if you're unlucky - I had one when I was a kid - it took me 8 months before I fully recovered.

There is nothing yet, that suggest that Long COVID is something more dangerous or irregular comparing to other virus that attack respiratory system.
Last edited by mr.WHO on Tue, 13. Jul 21, 13:10, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by pjknibbs » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 13:04

According to some stats on an article I read earlier (which I can't bloody find now, typical), Covid deaths in the US, at least, are more than 99% among the unvaccinated. If true, I would say that's starting to move Covid toward "regular flu" status. Death rates in the UK seem to confirm that--in January the death rate was around 1.6%, whereas at the moment it's more like 0.1% even taking the most pessimistic numbers.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 14:03

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 13. Jul 21, 12:43
Long COVID is media fear porn.
It is not.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... fects.html

But that's unrelated to the relation of rising infections and lifting restrictions. If you're negligent or even full of denial, it is your choice. Though it may be based on disinformation and it affects others around you. But pls. accept that other people do care. I mean, care is part what makes us human.

Here (La Palma island, one can easily check but info is in Spanish), we went from 0 to >120 cases in just a few days, all cases imported in one weekend by a car rallye, a swimming contest, an open air concert and a party or two connected with these events. The virus was imported, the new spread is a direct outcome of the lifting of restrictions and people hanging around, crowded and without masks. There are only few hopitalisations because >70% are vaccinated. In these conditions, the unvaccinated would be fools to go out, maybe some are.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Jul 21, 14:19

And this prove what? There is absolutely no statistical data in that link - if anything it's bizzare to see goverment documents with so many vague statements like "some people" and "some symptoms" in it.

It's like saying that cutting bread could be deadly base on cases when someone chop off their hand - technically true, but most people are not affected.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Vertigo 7 » Wed, 14. Jul 21, 06:52

Probably because that's not a statistical study and is instead an overview of what symptoms people may experience after recovering from an infection.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Wed, 14. Jul 21, 08:26

Exactly, but what this has to my point that media overblew the Long COVID beyond all reason?

Long COVID exist, so do lethal accidents when bread cutting.
Long COVID was looking dangerous due to the fact that 3-6 months after infection, it's relatively frequent (about 20 to 30% of hospitalized) for that timescale.
However now it's actually good time to start checking recovered people who has infection 1+ year ago, to see the actual scale of pernament dammage Long COVID.

If Long COVID is actually noticable (like more than several % of total infections), I'd expect a bunch of studies right about now - untill then we can only rely on previous studies like for Long SARS.
We need hard numbers - anything else is just cheap fear porn.


The results of LONG SARS study:
For SARS (which was less infectious, but usually caused more severe infection), the pernament dammage (for at least 1+ year) was really miniscule percentage of all infected (like below 0,01%).
However, the study was limited to Lung dammage, so we should extend this to other organs, like Brain dammage - yet there is no information that Long SARS was statistically frequent (I'm sure that if it would be 10-20% or more, someone would notice).

One thing worth notice is that Long SARS study was done based on Asians (can't rememember if it was HK or Singapore - both have top healthcare and weren't overwhelmed during SARS).
I had Long Flu for 8 months when I was kid and it was very irritating. Having Long COVID for same timescale could put significant strain on the body - if you already have pre-existing conditions and had severe COVID, then Long COVID could be the last straw.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Wed, 14. Jul 21, 10:44

mr.WHO wrote:
Wed, 14. Jul 21, 08:26
... a lot of nonsense, misunderstandings, whataboutism and pointless claims ...
Well, if we actually knew were you got your information from, we could discuss them in a possibly fruitful manner. But just like this they are only random claims, even confusing a virus family with the sicknesses they cause.

Please just assume that some people don't fall for unsourced claims. They don't add to the universe's benefit :boron:

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Wed, 14. Jul 21, 11:42

Looks who's talking - so far it was you who refers to vague statements and articles with no data.


I can't belive it actually so hard to get grip on real article with real numeric data that can be verified - had to go through 6 pages of Google trash articles, but found something that looks quite wholistic and detailed:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... oronavirus

Article with actual numbers and hyperlinks to the studies with numbers - albeit I already spoted the mistake - the article refers to percentage of "total recovered", while in linked study it's actually the percentage number of hospitalized (which is the fraction of total recovered).

Edit:
Second mistake in article - The article claim 40% of recovered have chronic fatigue, yet in linked atricle it's atually was that it was 40% out of 63% of all reported cases, plus the statistical data suggesting at least several non-virus related factors that contribute to chronic fatigue.


What is funny is that this article also contain the vague cdc guedelines you posted, but with proper numeric data, including detailed breakdown for case severity and type of dammage (lungs, hearth, nervous).

This is the difference between actually competent science article and media trash.
Last edited by mr.WHO on Wed, 14. Jul 21, 13:51, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Wed, 14. Jul 21, 11:51

Thanks, now we're talking figures.

That's roughly the same as the CDC article. And by your terms doesn't contain any 'data' either. What's important, contrary to your claims it states that severe Long COVID does show up in 10-15% of all cases, and 5% of all cases have critical symptoms, affecting the function of lung, heart or nervous system, possibly disabling the person.

That's two magnitudes (factor of 10) higher than what you claimed.
Last edited by BaronVerde on Wed, 14. Jul 21, 12:00, edited 1 time in total.

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